


A Convergence of Death

by Rinari7



Series: Inevitable Descent [2]
Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Charr (Guild Wars), Gen, Heart of Thorns Aftermath, Mordrem (Guild Wars), Sylvari (Guild Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:35:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25808221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinari7/pseuds/Rinari7
Summary: Many paths wind and twist through Mordremoth's jungle. Many of them end in the same way.
Series: Inevitable Descent [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872439
Kudos: 2





	A Convergence of Death

**Author's Note:**

> I had to make my peace with deleting characters I wasn't really using or finding joy in anymore. A friend suggested I give them a proper end, and that worked. So, this is it.
> 
> Featuring the same poor Sylvari from Notes on a Fallen Parchment.

Finally, the pull to the west was too strong. Ardhaela set down her charcoal, heedless of her spider-pet's confused clicks, and followed. Across the desert she trudged, where the strange plant-monsters — the terragriffs and the wolves and the thrashers — ignored her, her feet unhindered by vines. Mindless, almost, driven purely by some inner need, overriding any others — for food, for rest, nearly even for water. She abandoned her leather boots to an unexpected patch of quicksand, bark growing tough over the soles of her feet as a replacement. Next went her pants, when the creak and crack of worn, dry leather began to annoy — it wasn't as if she really had anything there in need of modesty. And last, she left her jacket, shrugged out of it when it snagged on a branch, pushed forward into the heart of the Maguuma jungle.

It was chaos — fire and shrapnel, ugly beacons of flesh-life among the flora.  _ Remove them _ , that voice commanded.

_ I am no fighter. _ It was instinct, some remnant of self-preservation, perhaps, some remnant of her still cognizant of herself.

_ You can shoot, can you not? Strike them silently from the trees, and contradict me no more. _

She took the bow quietly formed and offered from a nearby vine, and did just that.

*****

"'Iper!" came the call from further back in the camp. Margawen grunted to himself. Viper? Sniper? Shave his tail, did it matter?

"I'm just the repaircharr, little ol' me," he sang to himself, leaning against one crate and hunched over another. He was probably off-key, but that tended to happen when an explosion blew half your eardrums. The soldiers would lob some grenades out into the jungle, as they always did, catch a bunch of leaves on fire, and re-dig the camp's trenches for another flaming day in the same flaming place. If it wasn't grenades, it was gunshots, and yelling, and the awful screech and hiss of these plant-creatures — somehow in just the right register for him to still hear them clearly. And then, every so often, a proper bomb, when some intrepid paratrooper or a chopper pilot took out one of the plants' breeding grounds — seeding grounds? And the awful fireworks when the bomb sometimes didn't quite make it there. 

Rust and ruination, he longed now for the days in the Silverwastes, when he was just building, outfitting, the constant fire of cannons but a distant background rumble. The intermittency, now, made him notice when they were firing, and perhaps more ominously, when they weren't.

Red passed in front of his vision, glinting armor red as Blood. He glanced up from his bomb construction — not his, his bombs  _ never _ went off early, and neither did he,  _ heheh _ — to meet the gaze of a Charr soldier, whole 'band at his back, eyes narrowing in contempt.

Margawen pushed away any hope of begging — pleading, whining — for them to take him back to the Citadel, put him in the mines, in the Bane,  _ anywhere _ else. He knew Blood-brains, knew they would sooner spit on a lowly, aged repaircharr than do him a favor, never mind a gladium, never mind one who shied from battle. He might still try, though, over gruel by the fire pit later, just to keep from going mad — madder...

"Marg —" he heard, called out, echoing panic. The arrow came in from his blind side, skewering his skull with a loud  _ crack _ .

*****

Kyarra panted, whirling around to peer at the lush green jungle-tangle through red-misted eyes. "Come at me, you coward!"

The sun's spotlight on that small clearing glinted off her armor, off her axe and mace, off the unconscious tears dripping from the corners of her eyes and matting her fur. All that remained of her warband was ashes scattered at her feet, the last smoking embers of the funeral pyre. (She hadn't been with them, she  _ should _ have been with them...) All that remained of most Mordrem nearby lay hacked to pieces around her, planty-Charr-copies and flaming Sylvari and treacherous Hylek and whatever the blazes these raptor-'saurs were, maimed and mutilated corpses littering the forest floor.

It wasn't enough. Plants didn't bleed, didn't scream, just let out a long death-groan and lay there when whatever sentient spirit abandoned them. She kicked at the dirt, stamping down whatever new vines were coming to tangle around her legs. Her movements were still quick and strong, despite the myriad lacerations across her scarred pelt, despite the gouges where long thorns had managed to pierce her plated armor. Her own blood mattered little to her. Vengeance, victory, was what mattered. They were  _ all _ that mattered.

An arrow  _ clanged _ off her armor, and she turned, snarling, to glimpse yet another Sylvari ducking back into the cover of the vine curtain. Kyarra charged. "For Blood Legion!"

The vines buckled under her assault, several vicious slashes parting the wooden fibers like cloth. The Sylvari — the now-Mordrem, not that Kyarra knew or cared — flashed purple under the canopy, bioluminesence outlining her retreating form in the shadows. Kyarra flung her axe with all of her strength, dropping to all fours in pursuit. The axe buried itself deep in the Sylvari's calf, bringing her briefly to her knees — and Kyarra pounced.

The Sylvari lay flat beneath her, a spindly little twig up close, and Kyarra took some tiny pleasure in taking that leafy head in her claws and snapping that neck.

(Never leave a foe half-killed.) Even in the blinded fury of bloodlust, she was still a trained Blood Legion soldier. She tugged her axe from the Sylvari's leg and pointedly dismembered it — arms, legs, head, flung off into the thicket, little use to the jungle dragon besides compost fodder now.

But the branches were rustling, vines wrapping around her ankles and digging their thorns in. Kyarra growled, long and low. She didn't fear death — always knew she would die fighting. It wasn't as if she had any other purpose, now.

Clearing some of the plant fibers and sticky sap trying to cling to her weapons, facing the prowling vinetooth emerging from the foliage, she scraped her axeblade against the spikes of her mace, a long, smooth menace.

"Come here, mulch-muncher!" Her laughing howl soared through the canopy, launching birds wheeling in upset chittering flocks. "You will  _ all _ go down with me!"


End file.
